strations and guerillas, their freedom was completely suppressed, A lot of Western intellectuals look upon Cuba as they used to look upon Czechoslovakia before the Soviet invasion. What do you think would be the future of the intellectuals in Cuba?
I think the future is unknown. I' would go back to this idea of the ViciouS circle. Now there's possibility of something different, of even committing our own mistakes. And Cuban writers now commit their own mistakes, the country will commit its own mistakes, but we will be in this sense creative. And when you're creating, the future is unknown.
It's a challenge and we have to participate and take whatever risks that are involved in this, the risk of committing mistakes, When of being wrong, as especially when you consider Cuba's small under-developed country. We have to work with these limitations and struggle with them. But I think that the challenge is what important, the possibility of something different. Now the outcome depends upon us, but it's not a closed circuit. You don't know what the future will be.
Do you think the first criterion of art must be an excellency of form and content or how it relates to political issues?.
The revolution has taught me that politics are all pervading especially in the early stages ol the revolution. Everything is political. Now even the rose is political with the poet who says that the bomber is raking the heart of the rose. Therefore has also affected me as a writer. But I think there's a difference. My writing is also influenced by political considerations in another sense. I would say that, vell said it's like what Machiavelli about a politician-'He has very strong principles and he has to be an opportunist on a number of issues, but there are certain basic principles on which he would never surrender. Now I've made concessions in certain areas which I think are tactical. But there are certain basic principles of what I think writing should be or what I think an intellectual should be, or what I think an intellectual should be in revolutionary society. On these I don't think there's the possibility of any concession. You have to understand that socially everybody functions according to a. number of political considerations. There are issues on which people can modify their behaviour and their point of view, but there are issues on which they can't. I think the important thing is to maintain your integrity on these issues and also be supple and pliable on these other issues to survive.
What happens if the personal truth you're searching for does not coincide with the truth the society is proclaiming?
Well you would try by all possible means to make your statement and if this is not possible at a given moment you can keep quiet and wait for the right moment. But it is fundamental, if you are part of a society, not to break away from it, and a revolution is a total experience, therefore cannot break away without alieu ating yoursell. It's a very fast train won't be able to get on again. Not and if you jump because they won't let in the experience. think it fundamental to wait for the right moment and to continue to struggle for this. But not to make yourself against the system, because this would be destroving vourself if CREEDENCE CLEARWATER AT THE ALBERT HALL Rock music has lived through the first two chapters of its history. Fifties rock was a primitive synthesis of black and White musical traditions, which its Southern protagonists thrust into the heads of young. urban whites. It fizzled out with demise of its original heroes, or their cooption by the entertainment industry, which rock music's own social base was still too insecure to resist. What made sixties rock possible was that a significant sector of white college-age youth had freed themselves sufficiently from ruling class ideological control, and got far enough into the American musical heritage, to be able to play for themselves the music that had meant so much to their adolescence. This explains why sixties rock was closely connected in America, with 'the movement. Firstly Dylan, then the West Coast groups, then the British groups, all combined artistic advance with a mass audience Rock broke down the divisions of elitist avantgarde "culture" for the intel lectuals, and pulp for the masses. It epitomised the collective personality of a generation, of which the revolu tionary youth movement seemed only the political visage.
This second chapter drew to a close with Chicago '68 and the crisis of SDS. The idea of 'the movement' no longer formed a bridge between music and politics. Politics has become deadly serious, and the music has had to shed the naive optimism of the San Francisco era. Rock can no longer go hand in hand with real politics (though some groups, such as Jefferson Airplane, are still producing very fine music premised on illusions not yet left behind-listen to 'Volunteers' The time is now ripe for classicism: consolidation and synthesis of past gains, a diligent musical professionaIsm, a turning away from the aud ience to the internal demands. of the music itself.
These new qualities are epitomised by The Band and Creedence Clearwater, the two groups that have left most mark on the rock scene since 1968. In training for this role, both groups stayed together for around ten years. They acquired a coherence that enables them to create a sound that is pre-planned in utmost detail, a sound that is almost indistinguishable on stage from on record. But Creedence's classicism is a double one. The Band's music reflects their willing incorporation of emusical developments as they occurred-from Southern (Ronnie Hawkins) via second phase Dylan to a complex and meticulously elaborated style that reworks its sources in the harmonic, rythmic and lyrical structures developed by sixties rock. Creedence s perspective is al most the reverse; they intend to play rock'n roll (i.e. fifties rock), but, they resist the snares of parody and caricature, and preserve the true spirit of rock'n roll by making only minimal changes to it—in accord with the 70s Cid of musical authenticity. When Creedence play Good Golly Miss Molly they recreate the feel that Little Richard had in 1956, which Little Richard himself can't do by playing his old numbers.
Creedence are a fine group to watch on stage. If rock depends on the tension between the basic beat and the nuanced over-rythms woven by the vocal, the instruments and their interplay, then Creedence make this process visible. John Fogerty (vocal, lead guitar) stands sideways on stage facing his rythm section. The group are so tight and rehearsed that if a power cut struck them deaf and blind they would still finish the number dead on. But John visibly conducts them throughout-without the least pretence or show-urging the right emphases from bass and drums. (Con trast The Band, where Levon Helm leads from behind, invisibly, from the drums).
Each number-only a couple were not from their records- -was ecstatically pure rock. Fogerty sings with the effortless "meanness' of Southern rock; his guitar work draws on the and he sit be the sold runs and fifties tradition (Chuck Carl Perkins)
of the East. Texas bluesmen (Jefferson/Leadbelly/Willie Johnson). Stu Cook's bass provides the powerful support indispensable to a group of this kind. The only possible criticism is that their set was simply a series of individual numbers. Their penchant for singles is a facet of their classicism, but on stage a series of single hits of 2 to 2½ minutes is jerky, say the least. An old Ray Charles blues stood out, and they ended with an extended arrangement of Keep On Chooglin', which raised the roof. Inevitably, they spoke scarcely a dozen words to audience and went straight off stage at the end, their roadies immediately dismantling the equipment despite ten minute ovation.
more hardened fans in Britain. A sprinkling of freaks, a sprinkling of skinheads visible rockers-the bulk of the audience were shop and office workers in their early twenties, very straight looking—an audience a rock group would never meet with in the States. Despite the success of the home product, the cultural significance of rock in Britain remains far more ambiguous than in America. The Albert Hall management tested this by playing the National Anthem after th the ovation, which cowed at least hal those present. Andrew Chester "U "U"-THE INCREDIBLE STRING BAND AT THE ROUNDHOUSE.
The incredible String Bands early music original, personal. "psychedelic" freedom of language and instrumentation was grafted onto a firm folk-base, producing music that was constantly surprising without departing from a popular, traditiona appeal. Mike Heror and Robin Williamson borrowed from Indian and medieval styles, and they mixed traditional folk-narrative with fairytale and LSD imagery. The result gelled and their first record was one of the finest come out of the "Hippy Year" of 1967.
Now the most incredible thing about the Incredible String Band is their descent into whimsicali. 's a ness, vagueness and frivolity. dramatic demonstration of the flabbiess and bankruptcy of hippy cultur heir show at the Roundhouse ha the germ of a good ideathe combina tion of dancing, singing and lightshows into a collage of mythology and magic. But the Incredibles refused to use their intelligence about it. They refused to structure the show, to give it any shape. They refused to project anything concrete in their songs other than a kind of naive quaintness that got increasingly tawdry as the evening pletely smashed out of your head you could stay with them and enjoy the random, rambling collection of images that they and their partners produced But for anyone who had their wits about them the waste of talent and opportunity was infuriating Saddest of all is the decline in their music. The Incredibles have now left far behind the folk influences that for med them. Instead they have opted for a mish-mash of styles that is a mixture of everything and which ends up as nothing. Worse the sheer cosyness of their mysticism has removed all tension from their music-which even sounds amaturish.
Symptomatically, almost the last words of the show were: "You can real been thee all thou w liberty if you want, It's . This is what is wrong with the world created by the Incredibles; its a world of fan tasy without any reference to the world that people actually live in. Sc
The Black Dwarf 10th May 1970 Page 12